No, the Holy Ghost Does Not Cause Turmoil

For the past four years, Pope Bergoglio has indulged himself in an endless public denunciation of Christians he deems inadequate because they do not share his idiosyncratic theology of “the God of surprises” — meaning the God who decrees whatever Francis would like to see, including Holy Communion for public adulterers.

In one of the innumerable improvised sermons that are the primary vehicle for these unprecedented continuous attacks on orthodox Catholics by a Roman Pontiff — in itself an almost apocalyptic development — Pope Bergoglio mused as follows [my translations from the Italian]:

“What place does the Holy Spirit have in my life? Am I able to hear Him? Am I able to ask for inspiration before taking a decision or doing something? Or is my heart calm, lacking in emotions, a fixed heart?”

Here we have the usual combination of truth and grave error, perhaps the result of Pope Bergoglio’s obvious penchant for uttering whatever thought comes into his head at the moment, rather than relying upon a homily based on sound Catholic teaching.

Of course, one should seek God’s guidance before making an important decision. The prayer for that sort of inspiration by the Holy Ghost is the proper mode of discernment, as we see, for example, with the Ignatian method. But the notion that the action of the Holy Ghost in a soul seeking to discern the right path is a state of disturbance is utter nonsense. In fact, it is the opposite of the truth. As Saint Paul teaches: “But the fruit of the Spirit is, charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity.” (Gal. 5:22-23).

Mere emotions and a lack of calm are not among the fruits of the Holy Ghost. Such disturbances of the heart are what the action of the Holy Ghost eliminates so that one can follow God’s will. Indeed, the Ignatian method of discernment counsels that one must never make a decision in an emotional or disturbed state, but rather pray for that state of calm assurance which indicates to a soul that it is God’s will, not one’s own, that is being done. Even Wikipedia gets this right:

“For Ignatius of Loyola, there are two signs to judge: evil spirits act on the imagination and the senses, and the good spirit, upon reason and conscience. Then, they can be judged by their mode of action and by the end they seek…. A Christian should, according to St. Ignatius, share everything with a director who can see things objectively, without being swayed by the emotions or passion. Discerning whether the good spirit (the influence of God, the Church, one’s soul) or the bad spirit (the influence of Satan, the world, the flesh) is at work requires calm, rational reflection. The good spirit brings us to peaceful, joyful decisions. The bad spirit often brings us to make quick, emotional, conflicted decisions….”

Thus, Pope Bergoglio turns on its head the very teaching of the founder of his own Jesuit order. He continues:

“Even in the Gospels there are ‘still’ hearts. We think of the doctors of the law, they believed in God, they knew all the commandments, but their hearts were closed, they were ‘still,’ they were not disturbed. Let yourself be disturbed by the Holy Spirit…”

Again, exactly the opposite of the truth. It was the Pharisees who were disturbed and the disciples who were calm in the face of their persecution. The Pharisees were not “still” in their hearts but, on the contrary, were driven to rage by the influence of the Adversary, not the Holy Ghost.

But the error does not end there. For as those who have followed Pope Bergoglio’s relentless development of what is so rightly called Bergoglianism know, this idea that the Holy Ghost brings disturbance rather than calm is applied to the Church as a whole in order to attribute to the divine will the continual ecclesial disturbance — literally the “mess” — Francis has openly declared he wishes to provoke. Hence at the end of his sermon he declares: “Let us too ask for the grace of being able to hear what the Spirit says to our Church, to our community, to our parish, to our family, [and for] the grace to learn the language with which to hear the Holy Spirit.”

That is, according to the tenets of Bergoglianism, the Church is constantly receiving new instructions from the Holy Ghost about how to conduct her mission, which requires learning a “language” that will enable her to decipher the latest “disturbing” instructions­ — such as the new “mercy” that admits public adulterers to Holy Communion contrary to the teaching of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and all of Tradition.

This sort of continuous “illuminism” can been seen as a mitigated form of the gnostic heresy that has plagued the Church from her very beginnings. As the Catholic Encyclopedia explains,

“[Gnosticism] places the salvation of the soul merely in the possession of a quasi-intuitive knowledge of the mysteries of the universe and of magic formulae indicative of that knowledge. Gnostics were “people who knew”, and their knowledge at once constituted them a superior class of beings, whose present and future status was essentially different from that of those who, for whatever reason, did not know.”

Pope Bergoglio has spent the past four years denouncing the Catholic faithful who wish — calmly, rationally and with tranquility — to practice the faith of their fathers. He denounces them without ceasing because they are not among “the people who know” what the Holy Ghost supposedly demands today, which can be known only if one is in a state of continual disturbance rather than calm assurance about what is right.

But we know the source of disturbance in matters spiritual. His name is legion. And what a terrible sign of the times it is that no less than a Roman Pontiff appeals (however unwittingly) to that very source, calling for the very disturbance it has brought to the Church over the past fifty years. To recall once again the devastating admission of Paul VI — too little, too late:

“[T]he smoke of Satan has entered into the temple of God: there is doubt, uncertainty, problems, unrest. Doubt has entered our consciences, and it has entered through the windows which were meant to have been opened to the light. This state of uncertainty reigns even in the Church…. We will confide Our thoughts to you: there has been interference from an adverse power: his name is the devil…” (Paul VI, Insegnamenti, Ed. Vaticana, Vol. X, 1972, p. 707.)